"
"You would! Very well; do me the favor to question Chupin."
CHAPTER XV
It was only two weeks since the Duc de Sairmeuse had returned to France;
he had not yet had time to shake the dust of exile from his feet, and
already his imagination saw enemies on every side.
He had been at Sairmeuse only two days, and yet he unhesitatingly
accepted the venomous reports which Chupin poured into his ears.
The suspicions which he was endeavoring to make Martial share were
cruelly unjust.
At the moment when the duke accused the baron of conspiring against the
house of Sairmeuse, that unfortunate man was weeping at the bedside of
his son, who was, he believed, at the point of death.
Maurice was indeed dangerously ill.
His excessively nervous organization had succumbed before the rude
assaults of destiny.
When, in obedience to M. Lacheneur's imperative order, he left the grove
on the Reche, he lost the power of reflecting calmly and deliberately
upon the situation.
Marie-Anne's incomprehensible obstinacy, the insults he had received
from the marquis, and Lacheneur's feigned anger were mingled in
inextricable confusion, forming one immense, intolerable misfortune, too
crushing for his powers of resistance.
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